Seems we have at least ONE school board member that is voting against consolidation. Where do the rest of them stand? Good question.
As much as I would like to say it won’t happen, I’m sure most of the school board members will vote for consolidation, (besides Kate Parker)
The school board will vote Monday night on her recommendation to close Longfellow and Jefferson in 2015 and replace Mark Twain with a two-story school for as many as 600 students.
You will likely see the school board approving this measure. But let’s ask the important questions that the AL and Josh Verges did not ask;
1) Where did the $800,000 figure come from? If this is a salary figure, I totally understand. But tearing down three schools and building a new one isn’t free, and the mortgage payments will not come cheap. So are we really saving money? Not to mention as DT SF becomes revitalized, wouldn’t we think enrollment would go up instead of down at these schools? Wouldn’t upgrades make more sense?
2) Who has peaked interest in buying Longfellow and Jefferson? The hospitals?
3) What is the relationship between bonding companies and school board members and Homan?
What disappoints me the most isn’t that this may happen (I have no kids, so I don’t have a dog in this fight, except for paying property taxes) but that even after I asked Managing Editor Patrick Lalley on the ‘100 Eyes’ show last week to ask these questions, he and Ellis reassured me that they will. Well, Josh Verges certainly did not, and if he did, it was edited out of the story. Why is the AL neglecting to tell the bigger story here? What do they have to lose? They have told us on repeat occasions that the AD department and the NEWS department don’t dictate each others duties, but have yet to provide proof of this.
Who are two of the largest advertisers in the AL?